He had finally drifted into slumber when the young purba cried out. Shan shot up and stood at the Tibetan's back as he read out loud. "The first entry says Colonel Rongqi, but that was twenty-five years ago." The purba read quickly at first, then more slowly, pausing more and more frequently as the words sank in. Rongqi had three tours of duty in Tibet, the last two especially requested due to what one file glimpsed in Lhasa said was his extraordinary patriotism and, perhaps, the fact that his father had been killed in 1961 by khampa guerrillas. He had become renowned in the People's Liberation Army for subjugation techniques, even to the extent of becoming a special lecturer on the topic at one of the PLA's training academies. During his first tour he had been notorious for forcing public copulation between monks and nuns, typically in the courtyards of gompas before they were leveled by his explosives experts. By forcing them to break their vows of celibacy, he forced them out of the church. Thirty-six gompas in central Tibet, north of Lhasa, had been looted and leveled on his orders, usually under his personal supervision. Pieces of two huge bronze Buddhas from one of the gompas had been seen by witnesses at a foundry in Tientsen, near Beijing. During his cleansing program, six hundred ninety-six monks and nuns had disappeared. Shan asked if Lau's nunnery, built beside the small gompa of the Yakde Lama near Shigatse, was on the list of those destroyed by Rongqi. The purba read silently, then looked up with a slow nod.

"She recognized him that day in Urumqi," Shan said with a chill in his voice. "The butcher had come back from her past." He shuddered, thinking of the horror that must have shaken the sturdy Lau, the momentary reaction that had given everything away.

The purba read on. During his second tour Rongqi had been commended by the Chairman himself for an initiative he called Sterilize the Seed, based on the principle that the Tibetan religious establishment was held together by its reincarnate lamas and that the death of every such lama represented a political opportunity for the people's government. Ideally, the government should assure the extinction of the reincarnate line by preventing the identification of the new incarnation. Rongqi accomplished this in over thirty documented cases, by destroying the tokens used to identify the new incarnation, imprisoning the lamas who traditionally were charged with the process of identifying new lamas, and, in one case, dynamiting and permanently draining the oracle lake consulted for the new lama.

During his third tour Rongqi, newly promoted to general, institutionalized his campaign by developing a catalog of all reincarnate lamas surviving in his military zone and all the identification artifacts, the signs- the favorite gau, the special robe, the ancient rosary- so that seeds could be sterilized not just in his immediate command district but in a region of hundreds of square miles in central Tibet. Where identification could not be blocked, Rongqi seized the incarnate child and dispatched him to special party schools in eastern China. In the process the general had turned the Bureau of Religious Affairs in his district into a paramilitary organization, staffed with his own soldiers. The few local lamas who escaped sterilization were neutralized with riches: he offered military doctors to peasants, military equipment for working nearby fields, and an increase in the licenses granted to monks so long as the lama agreed to leave and to attend special Chinese schools for four or five years. Party bosses enthusiastically embraced the idea. A special institute for Tibetan studies had been opened in Beijing for this sole purpose.

Finally, the general had convinced Beijing of a new tactic for special cases, especially when lamas had a potentially important role in influencing economic activity: preempt the designation by declaring a new lama, one of the state's own choosing. By the end of his tour twelve years earlier, only four lamas had held out, keeping their independence- and of those, only one, a lama of a very old school with only a handful of gompas in all of Tibet, had passed on and was undergoing reincarnation. The Yakde Lama. The Ninth Yakde had died just before Rongqi had been reassigned to Xinjiang. His request to stay to finish his work, to stay and capitalize on the death of the Yakde, had been denied because his special skills in economic development had been needed in Xinjiang. But he had not given up. A copy of a memorandum sent by Rongqi in Xinjiang had been taken from a knob office in Lhasa five years earlier, asking Public Security to watch for evidence of a new Yakde Lama, for old informers had reported to him that a Tibetan nun was secretly nurturing a new incarnation.

Shan lay back on his pallet, feeling a strange numbness. What agony she must have felt, being thrown by happenstance in front of Rongqi, unprepared, knowing that Rongqi's involvement would mean the beginning of the end. Who would be able to hide their reaction on recognizing such a butcher? It would not have taken much to make the general suspicious. Rongqi might not even have known with certainty about Lau's connection to Khitai, might have simply suspected she was a disguised Tibetan. But a disguised Tibetan woman could be a secret nun, and a nun would be the link he sought to the new Yakde Lama. She had not been surprised when Wangtu had informed her that she was being replaced, just quietly made her arrangements to protect the Yakde Lama. But Rongqi had reacted much faster than she had expected, faster than Shan would have expected. Because, Shan realized, the Brigade was a much more efficient resource for Rongqi than the army. Lau's secret had been penetrated and the Yakde Lama finally had been killed, only weeks after she had met the only man in the world pledged to destroy the Yakde.

But Rongqi wasn't just after revenge. He was implementing his policies. Eliminate the line by eliminating all the indicators of the new incarnation, which meant the boys would still be stalked, for Khitai had given one of them the Jade Basket. Another piece of the puzzle had fallen into place. Now he had to discover who was serving as Rongqi's instrument in Yoktian. Ko was a businessman, too young to feel the enmity for Tibetans the killer must possess. Was it Xu, or did she just hate Tibetans for all the usual reasons? Or had it only been Bao all along? No. Bao was a knob, driven by knob ambitions and knob arrogance, unlikely to take orders from the Brigade, even its second-highest manager. Bao was following the trail of boys to find the Americans, a trail he had detected before Lau had been killed. Rongqi's agent was following the boys to find the Yakde Lama. Another piece of Shan's puzzle had fallen into place. But all the others were as obscure as ever. The only thing Shan knew for certain was that the killers still stalked the boys. And if Gendun and Lokesh got in their way, the two old Tibetans had no hope of surviving.

Suddenly he looked up and searched the faces of Jowa and Fat Mao. "Micah," he gasped with sudden realization. "The American." The boys were still being stalked, and the dropka woman said Micah may have been at the lama field with Khitai. Xu herself had confirmed that a second clan had been at the lama field. Micah had been given the Jade Basket. Bao and the boot squads were searching for the Americans. Another killer, sent by Rongqi for the Jade Basket, roamed the mountains. The paths of the killers had converged. And the American boy was their target.

Fat Mao and Shan had been walking for an hour in the dim predawn light when Mao threw up his hand in warning. He pushed Shan toward a boulder and crouched behind another as a solitary figure came up the trail behind them. It was Jowa, running hard, his head raised high as though he struggled to see something, or someone, in the distance. Fat Mao stood after Jowa passed, and a moment later Jowa slowed, his hand going reflexively to his belt. But his dagger was gone.